So yesterday I have the afternoon to myself and figured I'd wrap up my Saginaw p/s swap. Since I'm nearing the end of a 5 year build I figured I dig deep and make some real progress, hopefully wheeling it upon return from Moab!!! Things went well throughout the day... Got the hole in the frame done w/o issue, gear box mounted, boxed the frame, and welded everything together. Since my 4 hour job was now nearing it's 10th hour, I figured I'd better call it a night. While cleaning up, and about to jump in the shower, I hear, and feel in my feet, an unfamiliar sound; similar to a door slamming but with 1/2 the noise. At any rate, I'm exhausted and I nearly ignore this mysterious noise but curiosity gets the best of me and I gotta investigate, even if I'm naked! All doors are good; kids are in their beds, wife is fast asleep... “Weird” I say. However, being that I'm a responsible Cruiser owner, better check on her & take one last look at my ever improving welds. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD- Smoke is banked to the floor of the garage, I'm naked, & I'd never hear the end of it if West Metro Fire Department showed up!!! For those of you that don't know, I'm a Fireman with Aurora- everyone know everybody. At any rate, it was pretty obvious that it was electrical in nature and that’s when I remembered that I hadn't disconnected my battery prior to welding- SOB!!! To add insult to injury, the negative wasn’t even tight and it took 2 seconds to disconnect. With the sizzling stopped, I opened my garage to vent it out a little, threw some clothes on, and went back outside to look at the damage. Yep, every wire on her is toast!!! Long story longer, I went to bed thanking the Cruiser gods for making that sound; the kid’s rooms are right above the garage & she needed a new harness anyway...

On a side note: After finishing all the welding, I spent about 2 hours under the hood. It took 3 hours post welding for this to get going.

So yesterday I have the afternoon to myself and figured I'd wrap up my Saginaw p/s swap. Since I'm nearing the end of a 5 year build I figured I dig deep and make some real progress, hopefully wheeling it upon return from Moab!!! Things went well throughout the day... Got the hole in the frame done w/o issue, gear box mounted, boxed the frame, and welded everything together. Since my 4 hour job was now nearing it's 10th hour, I figured I'd better call it a night. While cleaning up, and about to jump in the shower, I hear, and feel in my feet, an unfamiliar sound; similar to a door slamming but with 1/2 the noise. At any rate, I'm exhausted and I nearly ignore this mysterious noise but curiosity gets the best of me and I gotta investigate, even if I'm naked! All doors are good; kids are in their beds, wife is fast asleep... “Weird” I say. However, being that I'm a responsible Cruiser owner, better check on her & take one last look at my ever improving welds. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD- Smoke is banked to the floor of the garage, I'm naked, & I'd never hear the end of it if West Metro Fire Department showed up!!! For those of you that don't know, I'm a Fireman with Aurora- everyone know everybody. At any rate, it was pretty obvious that it was electrical in nature and that’s when I remembered that I hadn't disconnected my battery prior to welding- SOB!!! To add insult to injury, the negative wasn’t even tight and it took 2 seconds to disconnect. With the sizzling stopped, I opened my garage to vent it out a little, threw some clothes on, and went back outside to look at the damage. Yep, every wire on her is toast!!! Long story longer, I went to bed thanking the Cruiser gods for making that sound; the kid’s rooms are right above the garage & she needed a new harness anyway...

So yesterday I have the afternoon to myself and figured I'd wrap up my Saginaw p/s swap. Since I'm nearing the end of a 5 year build I figured I dig deep and make some real progress, hopefully wheeling it upon return from Moab!!! Things went well throughout the day... Got the hole in the frame done w/o issue, gear box mounted, boxed the frame, and welded everything together. Since my 4 hour job was now nearing it's 10th hour, I figured I'd better call it a night. While cleaning up, and about to jump in the shower, I hear, and feel in my feet, an unfamiliar sound; similar to a door slamming but with 1/2 the noise. At any rate, I'm exhausted and I nearly ignore this mysterious noise but curiosity gets the best of me and I gotta investigate, even if I'm naked! All doors are good; kids are in their beds, wife is fast asleep... “Weird” I say. However, being that I'm a responsible Cruiser owner, better check on her & take one last look at my ever improving welds. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD- Smoke is banked to the floor of the garage, I'm naked, & I'd never hear the end of it if West Metro Fire Department showed up!!! For those of you that don't know, I'm a Fireman with Aurora- everyone know everybody. At any rate, it was pretty obvious that it was electrical in nature and that’s when I remembered that I hadn't disconnected my battery prior to welding- SOB!!! To add insult to injury, the negative wasn’t even tight and it took 2 seconds to disconnect. With the sizzling stopped, I opened my garage to vent it out a little, threw some clothes on, and went back outside to look at the damage. Yep, every wire on her is toast!!! Long story longer, I went to bed thanking the Cruiser gods for making that sound; the kid’s rooms are right above the garage & she needed a new harness anyway...

On a side note: After finishing all the welding, I spent about 2 hours under the hood. It took 3 hours post welding for this to get going.

Sorry to read your story, Travis, but a new wiring harness is a small price to pay relative to what could have happened, as you already know. Glad that you were curious enough to find out what was going on. A good lesson learned.

Wow - ouch. I used an off-brand harness ('It's a Snap!'). It doesn't appear to be sold under that name any longer.

Anyway, the 18-circuit one was $120 (years ago) and it worked nicely. The harness is GM-centric, so you may have to add one wire to get it to play with a Toyota turn signal harness. If I did it again, I'd order several more circuits than I think I would need. I had to splice on every single Toyota connector and do a number of mods, which you'd have to do with all of them. In my case, I rewired a '65 FJ45 from end to end.

I wouldn't be afraid to try an off-brand harness, as long as it is US-made and has labeled wires. In some cases, Painless is about 3x the cost of the competition, which seems like a huge premium.